Service provisioning engagement refers to delivery of services from a service provider to a client of the service provider, according to an agreement between the service provider and the client. The services delivered by the service provider to the client may include information technology (IT) based services. Scope of the service provisioning engagement, deliverables expected during the service provisioning engagement, and a criterion for acceptance of service provisioning engagement is agreed upon between the client and the service provider. The service provisioning engagement defines the governance, monitoring, and pricing policy. The service provider generally has experience in handling similar type of services and is capable of providing the services to the client in the most optimum manner, and therefore, the client may choose to enter into a service provisioning engagement in some select functions with the service provider rather than performing the services.
Service provisioning engagements can be either done in-house, that is, it can be undertaken by a specific department in the client's organization, or service provisioning can be outsourced, in which case another external organization provides services to the client. Outsourced service provisioning is generally governed by contracts, whereas, in case of an in-house service provisioning, the clauses may be inherently understood or may be discussed orally or may be governed by contracts.
Service provisioning engagements are preferred because of the various advantages provided by service provisioning which includes lower costs, experience in performing the service, focused approach to work delivery. Service provisioning models have evolved over a period of time and models the terms of engagement between service provider and client. A service provisioning engagement may involve the service provider providing resources to the client for specific time duration. A service provisioning engagement may also involve executing a project from inception to delivery by the service provider.
In the present document, the word “exemplary” is used herein to mean “serving as an example, instance, or illustration.” Any embodiment or implementation of the present subject matter described herein as “exemplary” is not necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over other embodiments.
It should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that any block diagrams herein represent conceptual views of illustrative systems embodying the principles of the present subject matter. Similarly, it will be appreciated that any flow charts, flow diagrams, state transition diagrams, pseudo code, and the like represent various processes which may be substantially represented in computer readable medium and so executed by a computer or processor, whether or not such computer or processor is explicitly shown.